1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to food portioning tools, and more specifically to portioning tools designed to easily dispense a consistent portion of food product such as ground beef without excessive sticking of the food product to the portioning tool.
2. Description of Related Art
Many restaurants currently use a variety of tools to dispense a portion of food onto or into a plate or similar food product (e.g, a taco shell). Pie knifes, scoops, and spoons have commonly been used for this purpose. While these tools adequately dispense food products, the amount dispensed varies widely from serving to serving.
Many situations require a more accurate method of dispensing food. For example, in quick-service mexican food restaurants, consistent portions of meat (e.g. ground beef) must be served on or into each taco and burrito served. Using existing tools presents a variety of problems. First, when a pie knife or similar tool is used, the worker must estimate the portion to be served. This results in inaccurate and inconsistent portion sizes; typically, under portioning results. Also, use of the pie knife in this manner is messy as the dispensed food product tends to fall off the knife, and waste commonly results.
To prevent food from falling off the dispenser, some restaurants use scoops. Most scoops, however, are not properly shaped to dispense meat or other consumables into a taco shell or other oddly shaped receptacles. For example, it is difficult to fill a narrow taco shell with a round scoop. To overcome this shortcoming, some scoops are shaped to easily fill a taco shell. These scoops have a length approximating the length of a taco shell and the opening in the scoop generally matches the width of the opening on the top of the taco shell. In the existing scoops shaped to fill tacos, however, the ground beef tends to stick in the scoop. This results in inconsistent portions after only a brief period of use.
A need therefore exists for a tool capable of providing consistent portions of food such as ground beef. The tool should be shaped to easily fill an oddly shaped receptacle. To ensure consistency between portions, the tool should minimize the amount of food that may stick.